Intrusion (5 page)

But he was running out of time. His meeting with Danvers was scheduled for tomorrow and he’d already dodged several calls from Nanodyne’s CEO.

He tapped out a series of codes on his keyboard. Though Nanodyne had invested in top of the line cyber security, Cam was confident that he could figure out a way to gain remote access to their mainframe network. After all, he’d never met a code he couldn’t break with a little patience and a good dose of ingenuity.

His cell phone started singing
Another One Bites the Dust
, and he leaned down to stop it from vibrating off the coffee table. The number that flashed across the caller ID tugged a grin from his lips.

He pressed the phone to his ear. “How’s it hanging, you lucky bastard?”

“Same as always. You?” Keith King, best bud and former spec ops brother, snorted into the phone. “Why do I even ask? I know I’ll get the standard response out of you.”

His standard response being his own colorful version of “peachy”, coined during the period in his life he referred to as the dark ages, right after his knee had been blown to hell.

“Life’s more like a kumquat these days, my friend.”

Keith laughed. “Yeah? And what the hell is a kumquat?”

“You know, the little gem of the citrus family, sweet rind, juicy acidic pulp...kind of like me.”

He could picture Keith, somewhere at Bragg, shaking his head. “Where do you get this stuff?”

“Books, King. You should try one sometime.” Cam booted up his decryption program and set it to work. “I’m surprised to hear from you. I thought you’d be wheels up with the rest of the team by now.”

Keith blew out an audible breath over the line. “Actually, I’m thinking of taking a position a little closer to home.”

Keith was one of the best Engineer Sergeants Cam had ever worked with. His old A-team couldn’t have asked for a better navigator and demolitions expert. Methodical and dedicated, Keith loved being out in the field.

Cam couldn’t imagine him giving it all up.

He frowned. “Don’t tell me the King’s about to turn into a Rear Echelon Mother Fucker,” he said, using Army speak for an officer who’s chained to a desk.

Keith chuckled. “Never.” He cleared his throat. “Grace is pregnant.”

“Holy shit.”

“Yeah, that’s what I said when she told me.”

Keith had fallen hard for Grace last year while tracking down her kidnapped son. Cam liked to think he’d had a hand in pushing the two to work out their differences. Or maybe he’d just given them a tough time.

He was good at that.

Except when rendered speechless.

“Wow, Grace with a mini-King baking in the oven. That’s...” he blew out a breath and shook his head “...congrats, man.”

A knife-like pang skewered his heart, and he easily recognized it for what it was.

Envy. Pure and simple.

He tamped down the tightness in his chest.

“Listen,” Keith said, bringing him back to the conversation. “I’ll be back in Arizona in a few weeks. We’d love it if you’d come up north for a couple of days.”

“That would be—”

Cam caught a flash of a familiar redhead on the five o’clock news and his jaw dropped.

He slid his laptop on the table and lunged for the remote. Dr. Audra McCain’s face filled the screen. The words ‘Breaking News’ scrolled beneath her shoulders. She flinched when a reporter shoved a microphone to her pale face. The camera zoomed in on her features and he detected the faint purple stirrings of a bruise just under the surface of the scar beneath her right eye.

“Uh, Cam?”

“Hang on a sec.”

He leapt from the recliner, hobbling on one foot, and punched up the volume on the remote.

He caught her shaky voice. “I have no further comments.”

A cop nudged her to a police cruiser and the afternoon sun glinted off the handcuffs shackling her wrists behind her back.

As the police officer shoved her into the back of the car the shot faded replaced by a news anchor.

“That was the scene this morning outside Nanodyne. Sources would only confirm that an expensive prototype was recently stolen from Nanodyne. Exactly what the prototype is and how much it is worth remains unclear. Dr. Audra McCain was taken into police custody this morning and continues to deny any involvement.”

The camera shifted away from the news anchor and a facial composite filled the television screen. “The police have just issued this sketch of the man believed to have allegedly aided Dr. McCain in the theft.”

Dark brown hair, gray eyes, sharp, angled jaw and a long nose. They’d gotten the nose wrong, but the rest…close enough.

Cam staggered back a few steps, his calves bumping the edge of the coffee table. “Son of a bitch.” The remote slipped out of his clammy palm and hit the carpet with a dull thud. He couldn’t drag his attention away from the detailed sketch.

He blinked at the phone still gripped in his other hand then raised it to his mouth. “Uh, Keith? I gotta go, man.”

“Cam, is everything—?”

He disconnected the call, a twinge of guilt pinging his chest. He’d just hung up on his best friend. The deed was a capital offense in his book, but it seemed the least of his transgressions given the bomb the news channel had just dropped into his living room.

Apparently, he was a wanted man.

Chapter Four

We’re running out of time. Our communities are no longer ours. We are a minority in our own country. Yesterday, an Albanian family claimed your land, Ivan. The remains of your charred home were demolished. What is next? Our churches? They must be stopped. We have lost enough. Don’t let us lose what little is left. I’m counting on you.

Tears gathered in Ivan Petrovic’s eyes when he reached the end of Miloje’s letter. The desperation of his brother’s words was not lost on him. Hopelessness penetrated his soul. He took a deep breath to ease the longing that tightened his chest.

The ripe smell of his fertile land filled his lungs, land that had been passed down within the Petrovic family for generations. If he closed his eyes, he could see the cluster of walnut trees cradling their black bird nests. He could taste the crisp water that flowed from the nearby stream.

He wanted it back. All of it.

He crumpled the letter and tossed the single sheet of paper into the fireplace. He struck a match, tossed it on top of the cream-colored stationary and watched orange flames lick around the edges.

His cell phone rang and he answered it, turning away from the last of the glowing embers. “Tell me you have it.”

The inept security guard he’d hired to steal the armor stammered. “I tried. Dr. McCain…she doesn’t have it.”

He gripped the mantle, bowed his head. Blood flooded his veins and rushed into his cheeks. “Are you sure?”

“Yes. I tore apart her entire house. It’s not there.”

He pounded the marble. “She must have passed it off to her accomplice before the police arrested her. Find it.”

“But how will I—I need more money.”

“I don’t care. Two days. If the prototype isn’t in my hands by then, you forfeit the rest of the money.”

“Listen, you made a deal—”

“Now I’m making a new one. Get me that prototype, Mr. Walker, or you might lose more than the other half of the cash.”

***

The smell of ripe urine and stale vomit clung to Audra’s nostrils. She drew her knees tighter against her chest and winced at the feel of hard metal under her butt. She shifted on the bench, a sharp pain shooting down her stiff neck, but she couldn’t move her exhausted limbs to massage the ache away.

After using her one phone call to contact an attorney, she’d spent the rest of the night huddled in this very spot, afraid to close her eyes or even let her guard down in the crowded cell. And though twenty-four hours had passed since her nightmare arrest, the events still buzzed through her brain like a wasp with its stinger poised to strike.

This wasn’t happening to her. She was a scientist, not a low-life criminal. Her fingers inched up towards her ears, desperate to block out the discordant noise of distant cell doors clanking shut. The finality of it made her situation seem even bleaker.

She shuddered and buried her face in her knees. A lump reared in her throat and she fought back the bile that threatened to make her stomach heave.
God, the smell.
Her icy hands sought warmth between her shins. Didn’t they turn on the heat in this place? A shiver ran up her spine. The stark cold of the cell, the pungent smell, even the hum of the people around her, were so reminiscent of another time and place.

A shaft of pain constricted her chest, choking the air from her lungs. She squeezed her eyes shut to block out the memories, but images of the dreary homeless shelter where she’d spent a terrifying month crowded her brain. Suddenly, she was ten years old again, begging her mother not to leave her.

Audra reached up and trailed her fingers along the scar under her right eye. So, her mom had abandoned her. Big deal. She’d survived.

Only to land herself in the slammer.

Footsteps echoed on concrete and Audra lifted her head to watch a uniformed guard pass in front of the holding cell. She leapt to her feet and rushed to the bars, but when he continued down the hall without stopping, she curled her fingers around the steel and gripped it in a painful fist.

She rubbed at the goose bumps prickling her arms and turned away from the bars, rolling her shoulders to shrug off the spiders of unease that crawled across her skin. The woman on the bench opposite her snickered then immediately fell silent. Another was passed out on the same bench. And the third...

A sudden low keening tore from the woman’s throat. She leapt from the stainless steel toilet, her skin-tight red skirt clinging to the tops of her thighs. Her shock of black hair framed her head in wild corkscrews and her glassy brown eyes darted a vacant stare around the cell. She pressed her palms to her temples.

“I need—I need a hit. Anybody got a hit?” The frenzied words fell from the woman’s lips.

Audra flinched and the woman zeroed in on her. Red heels struck concrete as the strung out prostitute rushed her. She grabbed Audra’s arm, her fingers digging in above her elbow.

“Bang me.” The woman gestured to her own needle-tracked arm and poked sharply at her vein. “Bang me right here. I need it. I need it bad.”

Audra shrank against the cell. The metal bars dug into her back. “No. I don’t—”

The palm of the woman’s hand smacked her cheek. “Give it to me.”

Audra sucked in a breath and blinked back the sting. She shoved at the woman but her grip was surprisingly strong. “Let go of me!”

Something struck the cell bars, making them vibrate. The woman jumped and retreated to her corner.

“Audra McCain?” A prison guard fit his key into the lock of the cell.

Audra sagged against the metal and waited for her heart to slow to its normal rhythm. “Y-yes?”

“You’re up for arraignment. Let’s go.”

He swung the door open and she slipped into the hall. The tightness that had taken residence in her chest yesterday eased, but she didn’t allow herself to take a breath. Not yet. Not until she walked far enough away from the small cell’s bad odor and sour memories.

The guard grasped her wrists in front of her body and snapped on the cuffs, their sharp metal teeth rubbing against her skin, while another guard joined them, flanking her for the short walk outside.

As soon as the heavy door opened onto the sidewalk, the sun speared her eyes. She squinted against the brightness. It stung at her eyes, but she rushed out of the jail without giving them a chance to adjust.

Clean air. Sunshine. Two things she’d often taken for granted.

She gulped in her first fresh breath since her arrest and let it wash through her lungs. A slight breeze ruffled the edges of her trashed pantsuit. One thick hank of hair had fallen out of its neat chignon and brushed drunkenly across her cheek. She reached up to straighten it, but the guards tugged at her arms, hurrying her across the narrow street and through the back door of the Maricopa County Justice Court. After an elevator ride to the seventh floor and a quick stint down a well-lit hallway, the guards ushered her into a large courtroom.

The vacant chairs should have comforted her—at least no one would bear witness to her humiliation—but combined with the weighty hush that blanketed the room, her stomach jumped.

“Ms. McCain?”

Her gaze snapped away from the gallery and settled on the woman at the defense table.

She stretched out a hand, her brown-eyed gaze bouncing from Audra’s disheveled appearance straight to the floor. “Jennifer Oberhaus, Sutter and James sent me over to handle your case.”

Audra shook the attorney’s hand. The cuffs jingled on her wrists and rattled her nerves further. “I’m not—I didn’t do this. It’s all a mistake. A—a terrible mistake.”

“I’m not here to talk about your case, Ms. McCain.” Ms. Oberhaus tucked a strand of black hair behind her ear. “I’m here to make sure you have a proper arraignment.”

“Yes, but—”

The judge at the bench cleared his throat. “Have a seat, Ms. McCain.”

Audra flinched at the gruff timbre of his voice. Here was the man who held her fate in his hands, the grim reaper where she would’ve preferred the fairy godmother. She swallowed hard and lowered herself into the chair, a stiff back her only semblance of strength. Her hands shook, rattling the cuffs again. She buried them between her knees.

“Let’s get to the charges.” The judge plucked a document from the top of his stack. “You’re being charged with theft, alleged to have occurred in the early morning hours of January fourteenth. Due to the value of the item in question, you’re also being charged with grand larceny, and as an employee of the company where the item was stolen, you are further charged with fraud for the alleged intent to deliberately deceive Nanodyne Corporation.” He peered at her through the thick lenses of his glasses. “Do you understand these charges?”

No.
She understood their meanings, but not the intent behind them. She wasn’t guilty, damn it, so why did she feel like a convicted criminal?